Always Christine!
by twostrandsofmelody
Summary: An AU reboot fantasy that rewrites the end of PotO and LND. E/C Riddled with what ifs and what coulds, what will befall our couple when they learn that what has happened has happened for a reason. Time shouldn't be rewritten.
1. Chapter 1

"Always _Christine_!" Meg shouted, she waved her hand in a blind gesture towards Christine. The gun sounded, startling everyone who stood on the pier.

Christine clutched her chest, expecting to have been shot. Instead she found herself and Gustave unscathed. She looked up from the terrified boy's face, to see the man that she truly loved wavering in his place.

"No!" Christine shouted, rushing towards the Phantom in time to slow his fall. "No. No. No."

He had stepped to the side just in time to save Christine from any fatal blow. Instead, sacrificing himself for her. It was his fault that Meg tried to drown their son, his fault that Meg had gone off the deep end. It was his fault that instead of committing suicide she had shot at Christine. He shouldn't have said what he had.

_We can't all be like-_

"Christine." The Phantom clutched her hand as she brought it to her lips. He pressed his palm against his stomach, were the blood leaked from his body. He had become accustomed to pain throughout his life; the beatings he had dealt with throughout his growing years at the Gypsy carnival and then the ache of unrequited love for over ten years of his life. Being shot in the stomach was an acceptable pain, but the pain of being eternally separated from Christine was unbearable. She was destined for heaven and he was already a step into Hell. She was an angel and he was a demon.

"Stay with me."

"Don't ever tell him." He shook his head, pleading her desperately to keep his identity concealed from their son. His vision blurred in and out as he stared up at the beautiful woman who had haunted him for years. He yearned to hold her in a passionate embrace, just one more time. One more time. To make it right, to stay with her and bask in the glory of a union with an angel.

_God, if you are there, if you are real. Don't let this happen. Let me live to be with her. Let me right this wrong that I have done to her. I have ruined her life, her marriage by being a coward. If I had stayed with her and told her how I loved her. Then, then, we would be together. If I had let the fop go and kept her. The kiss she gave me! It was not a kiss to satisfy a murderous monster. That had been a kiss of love! A confession. And I scorned it. I scorned and then I left her when she finally admitted to me that she loved me. I left her when she gave to me her maidenhood! She came to me the night before she wed. She wanted me not him! And instead I left her! Let me right my wrong! Let me! _

"I want him to know. He needs to know."

"Mother! I'm scared." Gustave whispered, slowly approaching the wounded man. "Where's father?"

"Here." Christine replied, taking her son's hand in her hand. "He is right here."

"I do not see him." Gustave looked around the foggy pier, trying to avoid looking at the blood that stained the wood.

"Here." Christine looked down at the Phantom. "Your real father."

"Mr. Y?" Gustave stepped back, "My father? No. It.. where's father?"

"Please." The Phantom pleaded, gasping and coughing. "No. I don't want him to see this. Go, leave, Christine. Go. Please. Let me die."

"Never. I have pretended that you were dead for ten, long years, always knowing the truth. I won't let you die." Christine brought the Phantom's hand to her lips, kissing each knuckle. "Madame Giry, Meg, please get help! Get help!"

"Christine," He shook his head weakly. "Who would help a masked man?" He gasped, the pain hot and streaking through his abdomen. He was not a fool to know that piercing wounds to the gut, always ended in death. Painful death. Though modern medicine was slowly catching onto hygiene, it was one thing that he had learned with the Gypsies. There were ways to seriously wound a man and not kill him and then there were ways to seriously wound a man and kill him quickly and then, ways to do it slowly. A piercing wound to the gut, would be a slow painful death as the infectious bile from digestive organs would seep into the blood and kill you. He had seen it done.

Gustave tugged away from his mother's grasp, stepping slowly backwards away from his… _parents_?

"I'm not letting you die." Christine muttered, she lifted him up, laying him gently on her lap. "I can't lose you. I've lost everyone to be with you, just one more time."

"I love you."

"I love you."

"Kiss me, please." He rasped, his grip on her hand lessening.

Taking a deep breath, Christine placed her hand over top of his mask, slowly prying it from his deformed face. His face no longer brought horror to her. Instead she felt deep pity for him and a deep hate for herself. How had she ever denied him in the light, giving him what he deserved only in the cloak of darkness. She was a coward and it was her cowardice that had brought them to this. If she had insisted that night, that she had _truly_ chosen him and not Raoul. If she hadn't been afraid of him and what he would do if she didn't obey him and leave with Raoul. If she had stayed when she had returned the ring, the ring that had been Raoul's to begin with. If she had stayed instead of waiting for night time to fulfill her deepest desires to be with him.

If he hadn't left her.

They were both cowards because they couldn't accept each other.

Christine pressed her lips against his, reliving the last time she had felt his misshapen lips pressed to hers. _Dear God, I cannot lose him. Not now that I've just been reunited. Please have mercy on his wretched soul. On my wretched soul. Please let us have these ten years back. Please let them be different._

"Christine! We've found a doctor for-" Meg ran onto the pier, stopping when she found that there was nothing but a pool of blood where the Phantom had lain. A pool of blood and a frightened child

"They just… vanished."

**A/N: Just a strange little AU, fantasyish version of LND. I had the incredible pleasure of seeing it twice and now I just want to play out this weird thought I had. I've seen it done before in Phantom stories, in a very different way but I wanted to play it this way. **


	2. Chapter 2

"Christine, I love you." The Phantom choked as he sang, tears streaming down his scarred cheek. Christine's heart broke. Why was he sending her away with Raoul? She had chosen him! Did he misunderstand _that_ kiss? It was not a kiss to save Raoul's life, it was an opportunity to finally feel his misshapen lips against hers. To finally explore what she had been craving to explore for months. For years.

The music of the night.

"Please," Christine started, kneeling in front of the broken man. Something felt different, she felt light headed suddenly. "Oh. What's wr-" She blinked her eyes, shaking her head. "I-" Christine looked up, slightly startled at first to find that the Phantom sat before her unmasked and unscathed by a bullet. "You're alright." She wrapped her arms around the Phantom in a childlike embrace. She had been so sure that he would die.

"Christine?" He questioned hesitantly, his hand resting on her back awkwardly. He did not know how to embrace another person, to him it was foreign. To him -… the world was suddenly spinning and his head ached with a sudden overwhelming pressure. "Christine." He purred, his hands no longer timid around her figure.

The ache of a bullet lodged in his gut had vanished. The feeling of age creeping up on him was disappeared. He felt young again. Young and tormented.

Christine pulled away from the embrace, cupping his injured cheek in her palm. "If only this Christine had accepted you for who you were in the light." She leaned towards his, ready to kiss away his fears when they both turned to the sound of footsteps on the cold stone.

"Raoul." The Phantom gritted, his voice harsh and cold.

Christine's eyes softened, the ache that she bore for him in her life, her other life, seemed to remain. She was the sole reason that her once handsome, young, vibrant husband had turned into a drunken monster. She had been a cold, dead, replacement for a wife.

"Raoul." His name fell from her lips like a desperate prayer. "I must set it right with him. We have this chance, no matter how terrifying it is."

"No." He snapped, grabbing her wrist and not letting her leave. "We leave together. _Now_." He snatched his mask from where it lay, discarded on the ground.

"But-" Christine stared back at the walkway towards the grotto as her Phantom led her deeper into his lair. His touch was once again heavy and possessive, what she remembered vividly of their time beneath the opera house. Not as hesitant and as nervous as in the darkness of the graveyard. Or even as frightened and longing as his touch at Fantasma.

"Not _buts_ Christine. We did not gain this chance to waste away what little time we may have here."

"What if we are here forever?"

"Perhaps this is hell for me." He added remorsefully, "I asked whatever god would listen to give me a chance to be with you as we should have been and-" He stopped speaking as he crashed a candelabra through one of the covered mirrors. With his hand around her hand he led her through the dark tunnel.

"I prayed the same prayer. But, I do not understand. As a child I prayed for the very same thing, when my father died. The only thing I gained from that prayer was you. You are not my father are you?"

The Phantom shot her a cold look, "Though I am older than you, perhaps even old enough to be your father. Rest assured, ma petite fleur, I am not your father." As if to prove his point he stepped towards and captured her soft lips in a desperate kiss. For this body it had been mere moments since he had had her pressed against him – but for the mind that dwelt inside the body it had been ten years.

"If I am to go with you," Christine panted as he finally pulled away from her. "I must know what to call you. The Phantom is bizarre and Mr. Y does not suit you."

He stroked his hand across her cheek, brushing her unruly curls behind her ears. He missed those curls. She had tamed them in her later years. "I should tell you the name that I was graced with at my birth? But my name was only ever a word to string along with cruel words and harsh curses. Why would I want it to taint your lips?"

"Because I would make it sound like the most beautiful word ever mouthed. I shall sing it as a lullaby for you." For the past ten years she had wondered what it had been. The time she had spent with him she remembered vividly searching for something in his lair that would bear his name, turning up empty handed every time. "Tell me." Christine pressed her mouth against his again, savoring the ancient memory that she was reliving. The new story of their lives. One where they would not leave each other.

"Erik."

Christine smiled, "Erik, Erik, Erik, Erik, Erik-"

"_Track down this murderer he must be found."_

"Come we must go, quickly." Erik hissed, taking her hand and running with her up the path that would lead to their escape.

"Raoul will think that you captured me. He will not leave us be! You should have let me tell him. I know him better now, I know what strange thoughts about you and I flittered through his mind."

"Tell me." Erik commanded as he tried to catch his breath. He was younger and perhaps fitter than before, but his body still felt old.

"For another time. For now we must rescue ourselves." Christine pressed a kiss to his hand. "I cannot lose you again."

"Once upon another time, I did not leave you." Erik whispered, cherishing this tender moment with her. He could not, still, comprehend that Christine – the love of his life – wished to run away with him. Vanish into the music of the night. Now he saw how wrong he had been that night. She had given herself to him, twice. The night that the Opera Populaire burned she chose him and he forced her to leave with Raoul. And on her wedding night, she came to him and gave to him what was rightfully her future husband's and instead of honoring that by act they were man and wife, he forced her once again to have no choice but to leave with Raoul. He had been such an ignorant fool. It had been clear and yet he only saw what he wished to see.

Pity.

Then he had seen himself as man edging closer and closer to forty, hideous as sin with a heart as darkened and blackened by the hatred of the world, desiring the love and soul of a young seventeen year old girl who's soul was as pure as an angel's and who's intentions could only be innocent care for her tormented angel of music.

This time there would be no mistake. He would take what she so lovingly offered to him. He would not hide himself before her, hide his face and hide his heart. They were hers. They had always been hers.

**A/N: So what do you all think of the potential of this story? I'm sure you can all guess angst!Erik and angst!Christine and pissed!Raoul. **


End file.
